Freakin' Long Weekend

Red-Haired Tuba Moms
Originally uploaded by sunasak

I am one tired Band and Singing mom. I did enough activities from Friday to Sunday for at least a week. But, I am not done yet!

Grateful

I am grateful for fellow parents who make all this volunteering bearable. These happy faces are my neighbors, Pam and Gina. Each of us has a tuba playing son and we each have colored our hair red. And we live within one block of each other. Spooky! We had a great time at our team's very losing effort against the Fighting Pflugers of Pflugerville. Did you know our team has the second longest District losing streak in history (Trombone Boy Wes told us that)? Wow! We're #2!

I am also grateful we are all healthy and safe. There was an accident this weekend involving a bus full of local high school kids this weekend and both our long bus rides were during the hours when the most intoxicated drivers are on the streets.

And last, I am grateful that Lee's job started today and it sounds good. Such a relief.

On to the Weekend

So, yeah, the football game was fun in a losing way. Lots of former band students showed up, and it was good to see them. But the game lasted long enough that it was hardly worth going to sleep before popping back up at 1:30 am to get ready for the trip.

Trip

Long ride to Arlington in very cramped and scuzzy tour bus. Not my idea of fun, but at least Beccano was with me and I got to watch him sleep, a thing mothers like to do. It really was a pretty good time, and the kids marched well. It was just a very LONG time.

There was much beauty to behold. The sky was blue and it was neither cold nor hot--that was a bonus! Some of the bands had really pretty uniforms or color guard attire. The band with the Spanish-style uniforms and Spanish-style flamenco dresses on the guard looked refreshingly different. And even though it was a PITA to stay unti the finals, we saw one or two performances that were so beautiful you forgot that you were watching high school students marching and became tranfixed by the music and sights.

There was a band from Flower Mound, Texas whose routine was all about flowers. Their sets were exquisite and their color guard very talented and creative. They had a giant lady bug who toddled out in the second movement and "danced" very charmingly with three students inside her, making 6 legs. This band only made ONE set of straight lines in the entire program--they made flowers, vines, leaves and other beautiful effects, all curved. How they all knew exactly where to go was beyond me. And when their "pods" were wheeled out and opened up to reveal stargazer lilies with trumpet players in them--wow! I hope they won (we didn't see the results).

In any case,while we were at first surprised to learn we didn't make the finals, we were no longer surprised after seeing the bands who did make it. Out of our league! But our band did its best and was nothing to be ashamed of!

Most of the day we spent watching most of the band sleep in a church gymnasium, while a bunch played Magic or ultimate frisbee. They also ate a lot of food. We brought a lot, too. The food people did such a good job. My friend Sharon and I went to a hallway to knit and crochet, and were joined by some others. We enjoyed watching the parade to the bathroom, especially the kid who wanted to know where the "dudes' room" was.

At one point, there was an African wedding in the church. We successfully kept the students out of the way of that, but also got to enjoy the incredible beauty of the traditional African fancy-dress clothing. Each family wore matching attire, and it was all stunning. Huge shining headdresses on the women, plus gorgeous fabric in their dresses. Men had equally flamboyant and beautiful fabric in their tunics, robes and pants. Some people wore western clothing, but it was also very lovely. it was especially fun to watch the ladies afterward carefully maneuvering the headdresses into cars. The bride and groom and the attendants wore western-style gowns and tuxes, but were all very lovely. What fun it was to watch a very happy group of people at a happy event. It made many of us wish we had a heritage that encouraged us to wear national dress or cultural attire on fancy occasions.

Transitioning to Sunday

We lucked out and had a nice quiet bus to go home on, and I slept enough that I wasn't totally dead when I had to wake up and go sing soprano with Saranda, who had also been at a band contest the previous day. We were not at our peak of high noti-ness. Plus she cried at the dang song. I was concentrating too hard on trying to make sounds come out of my mouth to get involved in the meaning of the lovely holocaust-inspired song.

Out of respect for you all, I hereby declare I will not go into detail on the sermon, other than to note that it was endless and no one over where I sat agreed with practically anything the dude said. That's UU for you, I guess. We were, however, happy that Lee's friend Rick came to the service and liked the church.

I wanted to enjoy knitting in the afternoon, but slept a lot and only knitted a bit. We took the boys to a nice Mexican dinner and thorougly enjoyed the conversation and camaraderie with them. What fine young men! Then, Lee and I went to practice with our singing friends, because Bill signed us up to do something after church next week. It was all very civil and pleasant, and we got to see what our other band-mate had done with his house. A lot of work!

And that brings us to today, which features Lee's first day at his new job, and me writing assessment questions in my current job, plus finding more things to add to the training. So productive! I just want to sleep. But no, gotta go sing for the community choir tonight. I am feeling like perhaps this is the busiest period of the year. Certainly it has led me to incoherant babbling.